back threeTim'm West, Juba Kalamka , Jaycub Pariz (cq) front three - "The urban Hermit", Jen Ro and J.B. Brown.
A group of gay hip hop artists from Oakland are part of a rising movement in the United States. 9/5/03 in Oakland. MIKE KEPKA / The San Francisco Chronicle less

back threeTim'm West, Juba Kalamka , Jaycub Pariz (cq) front three - "The urban Hermit", Jen Ro and J.B. Brown.
A group of gay hip hop artists from Oakland are part of a rising movement in the United States. ... more

Photo: MIKE KEPKA

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For HOMOHOP10, datebook, chonin ; Deep Dickollective performed at the 2002 Homohop Festival ; on 9/8/03 in . / HO

For HOMOHOP10, datebook, chonin ; Deep Dickollective performed at the 2002 Homohop Festival ; on 9/8/03 in . / HO

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They're here, they're queer and they homohop. Gay and lesbian artists, long rejected by mainstream rappers, are stretching the genre's boundaries.

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The Urban Hermitt was standing outside a school three years ago when she received her first explicit lesson in hip-hop gender politics. Waiting for her turn at a freestyling battle in front of Seattle Central Community College,

the aspiring MC watched another rapper clamber atop a bus shelter, strip to his boxer shorts and, clutching a microphone in one hand and his crotch in the other, spit out a rhyme about his anatomy.

The assembled crowd cheered. When the Hermitt's turn came, she decided to go with the flow. Peeling down to her own boxers, she grabbed her crotch and proceeded to rap the praises of having a butch, female physique.

"I've always had to fight for my time onstage," says the Hermitt, 25, who recently moved to San Francisco and now identifies as male. "I've had things thrown at me. I've had people try to beat me up."

It's a challenge gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender hip-hop fans face every day. Drawn to hip-hop's legacy of free expression, they too often discover that their stories are less than welcome in a genre filled with ethnically and socially diverse, but overwhelmingly heterosexual, voices.

For decades, gay hip-hop-heads have toed the line, rapping about everything except their sexuality and stifling their anger at homophobic lyrics by mainstream rappers. Like good street soldiers, they kept it "real" while the music they once embraced as a creative outlet became another closet.

Now that's changed. Thanks to the emergence of homohop, a growing genre that's equal parts music and community, gay MCs and DJs are staking their claim in uncompromisingly loud, rhyming terms.

Homohop is an international phenomenon -- one of the most comprehensive online homohop sites, Gayhiphop.com, is out of London -- but thanks to a recent QueerYouthTV documentary on the genre that spotlighted local acts such as Deep Dickollective (DDC), Jen-Ro, Hanifah Walidah, Katastrophe, God-Des and Jaycub Perez, the Bay Area is ground zero. At this week's Third Annual World Homohop Festival -- part of East Bay Pride -- gay rappers, DJs and spoken-word artists from across the United States will celebrate their growing prominence as they converge on Oakland's Metro Theatre for four nights of rhythm and revelry.

The festival, dubbed PeaceOUT, supplies a safe space and throws down a challenge. "Hip-hop fights against oppression, but at the same time it takes on the role of the oppressor by mirroring society at large: male-centered, patriarchal and classist," says DDC MC and festival director Juba Kalamka (a.k. a. Pointfivefag).

It's up to the hip-hop community to change that role, adds DDC's Tim'm T. West (a.k.a. 25percenter, and the author of the autobiographical memoir "Red Dirt Revival"). "It's one thing for GLAAD (the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) to say a lyric is homophobic; people in the community aren't going to listen, because they know GLAAD aren't hip-hop heads. It's altogether different when you have MCs and DJs coming out of the closet in growing numbers saying the same thing."

Gay-friendly rap faces a daunting task. Homophobia exists even within the hip-hop underground, where conscious MCs' progressive views seldom extend to gay rights. Lyrically, homosexual issues are spurned or mocked; historically, there have been few crossover alliances between straight and gay artists in the indie hip-hop scene, and gay MCs are discouraged from sharing the stage with their heterosexual peers.

West -- who, like the Urban Hermitt, has been shut out of more than one freestyle match -- says attitudes are changing, but masculine paranoia takes a long time to die. "There's this notion that if you allow a gay presence to enter a battle situation and someone who's gay out-rhymes you, you have to deal with being de-masculinized," he shrugs. "It creates a cultural shift."

South San Francisco rapper Jen-Ro, 20, hit a wall early when she tried her first rap at age 10. "The first time I rapped onstage was at a school summer camp," she recalls, laughing. "They pulled me off, but I didn't let it stop me.

It's important to let people know we're out here and we're no different. I feel like I'm speaking out for my peers who can't come out and say, 'Hey, I'm gay.' "

Urban Hermitt thinks providing an outlet for gay artists and role models for gay kids is more important than trying to change the attitudes of the straight hip-hop world. "It's 75 percent an outlet, 25 percent working for change," he says. "It's like, 'Hey, if you're going to diss queer people and make hip-hop an unsafe space, look what we're going to do.' "

Kalamka agrees that outreach through art is vital. "I have a community that supports me. It's different being 15 years old and queer in Hunters Point. What I try to do is provide a respite and let them know they're not in a vacuum."

Still, changing mainstream views on what it means to be a gay rapper, particularly a black gay rapper, is a concern, particularly in light of recent articles about African American men who live on the "down low" (or DL), playing straight in daily life while relegating gay desire to secret and depressingly unsafe sexual encounters.

"I think the media hype around the DL feeds into it," says West, 31. "A lot of the guys who now classify themselves as DL were out and gay a few years ago.

DL is just something that's become fashionable. It's all 'no fags, no femmes. ' Everyone wants a cut masculine thug, a hyper-masculine b-boy."

Controversy over the DL lifestyle isn't the only hurdle facing homohoppers: This year's festival nearly derailed when its funds were cut as part of cost- saving measures by the city of Oakland. But Kalamka, 33, decided to make the festival his full-time job, and Bay Area Pride founder and president Pete King stepped in with free office space.

Kalamka describes King's support as "critical" to the festival's survival. King figures homohop is equally critical to East Bay Pride.

"Since the early '70s, 'gay' has been defined by white men in the Castro," King says. "We want to take people of color, hip-hop, queer punk, women's music and youth culture in general off the sidelines and put them center stage. "

Kayatrip's Kali B, 40, hopes someday inclusiveness won't require so much hard work. "I'm proud that we're having a showcase where everyone can be out," she says, "but really it's just a bunch of talented folks in a place where they can be themselves and do what they do without having to worry about anyone coming down on them."

"The 'homohop' name serves a purpose now, but hopefully in the future we'll just be a part of everything and won't need it," says Jen-Ro, who will release her first album next spring. "I don't want to be limited by labels. Hip-hop is hip-hop."

West sees just such a future in his students at the Oakland School for the Arts, where he teaches English and creative writing. "I rap with my kids every day," he says. "I want to cultivate a generation of young men who will check each other on sexism, misogyny and homophobia. And these kids -- boys and girls -- will grow up with different ideas of masculinity and make it easier for gay MCs to be who they are."